Page 112 of Salt Between the Wolves

A memory surfaced without warning.

He saw Eira sitting beside that same fire with a book balanced on her knees, arguing with him and refusing to yield a point she knew she could not win.

He remembered the faint crease that appeared between her brows whenever she was irritated and the way she always looked directly at him when everyone else lowered their eyes.

The memory lingered before another followed.

He remembered the training grounds, the wind, the fading light, and her standing beside him during their final conversation.

The words Be careful returned with startling clarity, though it was not the words themselves that struck him most.

It was the pause before them and the look she had given him.

At the time he had thought she was angry, hurt, or simply eager to see him gone.

Standing alone in her empty room, he understood something he should have understood days ago.

She had already made her choice, and he had never seen it.

His jaw tightened, not because she had left, but because she had stood in front of him one final time and he had failed to recognize what she was trying to say.

Slowly, Soren crossed the room toward the window.

Darkness had settled beyond the glass while snow drifted through the courtyard below.

Life continued, the fortress endured, and on the surface nothing had changed, even though everything had.

Somewhere beyond the mountains, beyond the forests, and beyond every road he could currently follow, Eira was moving farther away with every passing hour.

The bond remained quiet, distant, and alive.

For the first time since the messenger had found him, Soren stopped thinking about where she had gone.

Instead, a different question finally forced its way through the noise.

Why had leaving felt safer than staying?

The answer did not come, and the silence offered nothing in return.

For the first time in many years, Soren found himself standing in the middle of a problem he could not solve with authority, strategy, or strength, because whatever had driven Eira from Ironfang had begun long before she ever mounted that horse, and he could no longer pretend he hadn't been part of it.

The room remained silent after he left.

Soren pulled the door closed behind him and stood for a moment in the corridor, staring at the stone floor while the weight of the empty room lingered behind him like a second presence.

Nothing had changed, and yet nothing felt familiar anymore.

The eastern wing stretched ahead in perfect stillness, with torches burning along the walls while somewhere deeper within the keep a servant moved through a distant corridor, and life continued as it always had.

Only now every corner seemed to remind him of her.

That realization followed him as he descended the stairs toward the training yard below, which lay empty beneath a thin layer of fresh snow.

He slowed without meaning to as a memory surfaced immediately.

Eira stood opposite him with a wooden practice blade in hand, arguing as she always did, wearing that faint look of satisfaction whenever she managed to land a hit and refusing to quit long after everyone else would have given up.

He looked away, but the memory remained.